A chafing stand is a device used to support aluminum or stainless steel pans and auxiliary fuel heaters for the purpose of maintaining and heating pre-cooked food at a location remote from the kitchen where the food was originally prepared and cooked. The cost of transportation from the point of manufacture to the distributor and/or to the retailer is a critical economic factor in the pricing of the chafing stand.
The chafing stand is designed as an open structure having a wire frame of steel which includes a rim of preferably rectangular geometry and a plurality of wire legs extending from the rim to maintain the chafing stand in an upright position so that the pan containing heated food can be supported above ground by the chafing stand at a height essentially level with the ground.
In an alternative embodiment the wire frame of the chafing stand may include an upper rim, a lower rim and a plurality of wire legs extending from the lower rim to the ground with the upper rim adapted to support the aluminum pan at a level height above ground and the lower rim adapted to support a plurality of auxiliary fuel heaters below the aluminum pan. The chafing stand in each embodiment has very little weight but its physical dimensions occupy substantial volume. Accordingly, the cost of shipping and transportation is controlled by the volume of the chafing stand and not its weight. To minimize the cost of transportation it is desirable to transport a multiple number of stands nested together in a compact arrangement and then to separate the stands at either the retail establishment or the point of local distribution. However, in the past the nested stands would tend to wedge into one another during shipment and were not easily separated.
This problem was overcome in the past by fabricating the chafing stand so as to include “offsets” at locations adjacent to the weld or welded joint formed between the upper rim and the wire legs. The “offsets” cause a lateral displacement between the wire leg and the upper rim at the point of attachment to the upper rim to provide enough additional space to nest multiple stands without causing wedging. This offset principle and various embodiments thereof is taught in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,996,948, 5,921,513, 6,047,932 and 6,520,354 respectively.
Manufacturing chafing stands with “offsets” adds to the construction cost of the chafing stand since the formation of an offset requires at least one additional bending operation and complicates what is otherwise a relatively simple fabrication into a more complex procedure. In addition, the amount of wire used in forming the wire legs is increased and additional time is added to the manufacturing procedure. Moreover, a conventional “overlap weld” at the contact point of attachment between the rim and the wire leg inevitably results in the wire overhanging the rim i.e., the overlap welding procedure results in forming an overhang of wire inevitably extending beyond the weld. The extension of wire overhanging the weld must be removed or at least filed down to avoid causing an unsafe and possibly dangerous situation which could invite accidental injury.
It has been discovered in accordance with the present invention that a multiple number of chafing stands may be nested together without wedging by welding the rim at least on the longer or longitudinal sides of the rim to one end of each of the wire legs in an arrangement such that the longitudinal axis of the wire legs intersect the longitudinal axis of the rim to form an included angle of substantially 90° and in a configuration substantially in the geometry of a “T” (hereafter “a T welded intersection”). Moreover, it has been discovered that a T welded intersection at least on the longer or longitudinal sides of the rim overcomes the need for “offsets” to prevent wedging and furthermore does not puce any overhang in wire. The method of the present invention is in sharp contrast to the conventional method using an “overlap weld” in the construction of a chafing stand which is believed to be attributable to wedging of multiple chafing stands and is a primary factor causing the wire to overhang at the point of attachment between the rim and the wire leg.